At Markey rally, Vice President Biden paints Gomez as part of Republican status quo

Surrounded by a friendly crowd of Democratic Party loyalists, Vice President Joseph Biden took aim at Republicans on Saturday to get the vote out for U.S. Rep. Edward Markey in Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate.

Surrounded by a friendly crowd of Democratic Party loyalists, Vice President Joseph Biden took aim at Republicans on Saturday to get the vote out for U.S. Rep. Edward Markey in Tuesday’s special election for the U.S. Senate.

“This is a new Republican Party. These guys are different. The last thing this country needs is another Republican senator,” Biden said to a cheering audience of several hundred supporters — a campaign aide pegged the crowd at 500 — who packed the Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Biden was the main attraction in Saturday’s campaign rally for Markey, who is leading his Republican opponent, Gabriel Gomez, a political newcomer, by almost 20 percentage points, according to several recent polls.

Having staked out moderate positions on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and global warming, Gomez — a Cohasset private equity investor and former Navy SEAL — has described himself as a “new Republican.” But Biden and the Markey camp on Saturday framed him as a Republican in the mold of conservative firebrands like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas.

“These guys are not just conservative. They’re anti-government, and they don’t want the place to function,” said Biden, who presented the Democratic Party as a champion of the middle class for supporting policies to close corporate loopholes, invest in infrastructure and education, and create manufacturing jobs and “common-sense” gun reform.

On the other hand, Biden said, today’s Republican’s “don’t get it” that a strong middle class benefits the country.

“This is not your father’s Republican Party. This isn’t even Mitt Romney’s Republican Party. This is a different breed of cat,” Biden said, adding that he attacked the GOP’s economic policies in “a debate with a guy named Ryan,” a reference to congressman and former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

Voting for Gomez, Biden added, would be the “first stake in the coffin” to delivering a Republican majority in the Senate. Drawing several “boos” from the crowd, Biden named Republican senators Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, and Marco Rubio of Florida, as well as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, as those who would like to see Gomez in the Senate.

“I know Mitch McConnell as well as anybody. He wants Gabriel Gomez in his caucus not because he thinks he might disagree with him, but because he’s confident he will in fact agree with all his doings,” said Biden, who mentioned that he has never met Gomez.

The winner of Tuesday’s special election will fill the Senate seat vacated when John F. Kerry stepped down to become the U.S. secretary of state. The winner will hold the seat for 17 months before facing re-election.

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A bit overshadowed at his own campaign rally, Markey — a 37-year congressman who Biden said would be the chamber’s best-informed freshman senator — spoke in the same venue where he refused to debate Gomez last Wednesday in what would have been the only debate in the SouthCoast. The candidates had three debates outside the region.

Instead, the event, sponsored by the SouthCoast Alliance, turned into a public forum with Gomez.

On Saturday, accompanied by his wife, Markey predicted that he will win Tuesday’s special election and that the Boston Bruins will soon win their seventh Stanley Cup.

“We know what our job is,” Markey said, “And that is to make sure that we help these cities to realize their potential, that we invest in these cities so they can reclaim their role in ensuring that all families are able to prosper in the 21st century,” Markey said.

Markey said he wanted turn the National Rifle Association into “Not Relevant Anymore” and attacked Gomez for opposing an assault weapons ban. He vowed to push to make the wealthy “pay their fair share,” including oil companies, said he supported South Coast Rail, and vowed to shore up health care, education and the local fishing industry, and to promote efforts to invest in renewable energy, especially wind power with New Bedford creating a port terminal for an off-shore wind farm.

Markey added that voting for Obamacare was the “proudest” vote of his legislative career and he slammed Gomez for saying he would vote for a Supreme Court justice who would oppose Roe v. Wade, the 1972 decision that legalized abortion across the country. Gomez said he personally opposes abortion but believes that Roe v. Wade is settled law.

Recalling a visit about three years ago to the three-floor tenement in South Lawrence where he grew up, Markey said he met a Dominican family living there with the same hopes and dreams that he and his relatives had growing up.

“I see this race as one where I’m fighting for those kids on that porch,” Markey said.

U.S. Rep. William Keating spoke before Markey and fired up the audience with a passionate speech in which he said cities like Fall River and New Bedford would not have federal funds to hire firefighters without congressmen like Markey.

“He’s going to stand for us. We have to stand for him.” Keating said emphatically.

Fall River Mayor Will Flanagan and New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell both said having Markey as Massachusetts’ junior senator is necessary to boosting their cities’ economies.

After the speaking program, and before Secret Service agents escorted Biden out of the building, John Rumbut, 76, of Assonet, shook the vice president’s hand and got his autograph. Biden signed “Joe” on a scrap of paper, which Rumbut said symbolized the veep’s unadorned speaking style.

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“He’s a straight talker. He’s talking straight about the other guy,” Rumbut, a Navy veteran, said, adding: “Republicans don’t understand what the majority of the people in this country actually want.”